Posts Tagged ‘pink’

We’re doing another of our “we-are-the-world” posts. If you’ve been watching the NFL at any time during the month of October, you’ve seen all that pinkness: pink gloves, pink armbands, pink socks, pink shoes . . . like that.

Now, as it happens, pink is one of our least favorite colors. Still, when we see it used in support of Breast Cancer Awareness, it becomes downright beautiful.

So as we were watching our Sunday dosage of NFL football, it occurred to us: while men can indeed have breast cancer, it is far more associated with women. Which is to say that most of those athletes adorned in pink are not wearing it for themselves.

And it reminded us of something we have seen all too often (at least from our perspective) in many online posts. Hey, let’s make the acknowledgement: we find it almost impossible to resist replying to HuffPost comments. We usually regret it, but we continue to do it nevertheless.

Anyway, we consistently find a surprising number of posters who take the position that it is inconceivable for anyone to actually want something good for someone other than themselves. Any benefit for the most vulnerable is assumed to be something we, ourselves, are lobbying for: welfare or food stamps or Head Start or Meals on Wheels or disability assistance or whatever.

Now, lest we stir up a whirlwind that is not our intention, let us hasten to say that, while we are not embarrassed to wear our politics on our sleeves, we do agree that you are entitled to your own. Actually, one of the reasons we often regret responding to posts – or even listening to Sunday morning talk shows – is that we get the feeling we are only rarely hearing what folks actually believe. It seems more like an endless string of talking points and fear mongering and mind-numbing spinning, spinning, spinning. We’d dearly like to hear an honest dialogue with participants from both the conservative and liberal ends of the spectrum explaining in detail exactly why they feel as they do, believe as they believe, without that pointless name-calling that we learned back in high school is simply an error in logical argument.

So please: let’s not go there. Not that you were planning to, oh wise and thoughtful reader.

But what we are saying is this: doesn’t it feel good when we come together to support one another? To ask for help for those in distress when we ourselves are just fine and dandy, thank you very much.

And if it feels good, why don’t we do it a lot more often? We just wish they’d pick another color . . .